


Closing the Loop

by Corrie71



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Crossing Timelines, M/M, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-03
Updated: 2014-01-03
Packaged: 2018-01-07 06:04:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1116377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corrie71/pseuds/Corrie71
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On Jim's retirement day, the crew of the Enterprise encounters the Narada, just after it's been built. If they destroy it now, they will collapse the alternate timeline and save millions of lives. </p><p>Written for the Tumblr "new year mckirk angst off 2014" when my first entry wasn't angsty enough. </p><p>** Please note the archive warnings ***</p>
            </blockquote>





	Closing the Loop

The distress call interrupted Jim Kirk’s retirement ceremony—a day that most of the attendees never expected to see. Most figured he wouldn’t go out with a bunch of nice service medals and a gold watch, that that ending was far too tame for anyone as audacious as James Tiberius Kirk. Anyone who had any sense credited his long life and distinguished career to the handsome doctor husband at his side. Until the distress call changed all that. So, instead of accepting his dozen or so medals and riding off into the sunset with Bones, Admiral Kirk boarded the Enterprise and strode onto the bridge as the man in charge, one last time, with his beloved crew all around him. 

“I really don’t see why we’re doing this. I got us a private beach villa on Risa that is just going to waste.” Bones grumbled. 

“I’ll still rub sunblock on you, Bonesy. Just a short delay.” Jim smiled at him as he made himself comfy in the Captain’s chair.

Once they arrived at Simet—a short jaunt now with Mr. Scott’s deluxe warp core—they dropped out of warp directly into a lightening storm. Jim stared as the Narada uncloaked herself in front of him.

“I know that ship.”

“We all know that ship.” Bones whispered back. 

“Admiral, this is the Narada as it was first built. Just out of the shipyard.”

“You mean—“

“Before the loss of Romulus, before the attack on the Kelvin, before the destruction of Vulcan…”

“Arm the…”

“Jim! You can’t fire on that ship.”

“The doctor is quite right, Admiral. Our weapons are not strong enough to pierce the hull. And, even if we were successfully destroy it, we would cause a wrinkle in time.”

“We’d rip a hole in the time and space continuum.”

“Wouldn’t it be worth it to save billions of lives?” Jim murmured, more to himself than to anyone else. He thought of his father and looking at Bones, understood the depth of his father’s sacrifice in ways that he never had before. 

“Fine. Let’s evacuate the ship.”

“Evacuate?” Bones and Spock chorused.

“Once we’re all safely off, we’ll send the ship into the Narada and detonate the warp core. We have to do it, to save billions of lives.”

“Even as we destroy our own?”

“Captain, there is every chance that if we do this, we will collapse the alternate timeline.”

“We must do this. To save your mother and my father… along with billions of others.”

After sending Bones to oversee the evacuation out of sickbay, Jim gave the evacuation orders, knowing that Spock knew he would have to stay behind to pilot the ship into the Narada, to ensure that the warp core detonated. With a glance, without having to say a word, Jim entrusted the evacuation and the safety of their crew—along with his beloved Bones—to Spock. At the turbo lift doors, he turned to Jim and raised his hand in a Vulcan salute before walking away to follow orders.

Jim sank back into the chair, rubbing his hand over his forehead. He’d wanted to kiss Bones goodbye but knew that his husband of half a century would guess immediately what he was up to. Instead, he’d sent him off without a farewell at all. He supposed that was terribly fitting. He sat, reflecting on his life, his ship, his crew, his love.

Within moments, the computer informed him that the last of the escape shuttles were away. He stood, programming the kamikaze maneuver by hand at the helmsman console and setting up the detonation of the warp cores. Just as he finished the lockdown sequence that would take him and his beloved ship into the belly of the beast, the turbo doors swished open. Jim whirled, expecting to see Spock. But it was much worse than that. 

Bones strode onto the bridge, the only senior officer that never had to ask permission to enter the bridge.

“What are you doing here? Why aren’t you on one of those shuttles?” Jim lurched out of the helmsman’s chair as Bones crossed the bridge toward him. They stood, staring at each other, the Captain’s chair between them. 

“You’d think I’d let you do this alone? So, if we close this time hole we…wink out of existence.” Bones said, extending his hands to Jim. 

“I always imagined that we’d go out spectacularly. I never expected to have to choose to give you up. To give us up.” They clasped hands above the chair that bound them, that defined them…and waited for impact, their gazes locked. 

“It was always and only you, Jimmy. From the first moment on the shuttle, darlin.”

“I love you, Bones…”


End file.
